No renewal angst here, thankfully, and whatever tension there is in the storyline tends to be leavened by outlandish escapism like when Andrew McCarthy's bad-guy Adler leaves our heroes to perish by flooding a dry dock, "super-villain" style, only to be, curses, foiled again.

This woodcutter's progress through a saga full of turns and twists may sometimes try a reader's patience, but Wolf's romantic quest leavened by dark comedy affords a few spectacular views, including his lingering memory of his faithless wife, "burnt on his soul like a shadow on a wall left by an atomic explosion."